to really understand something

To truly understand something, you have to work at it for a certain, often lengthy, period of time. This also applies to practices, be it concentration of attention, the technique of direct tracking, lucid dreaming, meditation, various energy exercises, and so on. You can't just up and learn yoga in a couple of days – that would be strange, wouldn't it? I'm saying this because it's pointless to want only the result while having no desire to set your feet on the path that leads to it.

The result is no more important than the path; it is nothing more than a way of speaking about who you are at the moment you achieve it. What matters far more is the road itself, which is life. You adopt some technique and prepare yourself for the fact that mastering it will take time. Perhaps weeks, months, or even years...

The same goes for work and everything else – you humbly and responsibly accept the fact that this has now become a part of your life, and you walk along with it, explore, make discoveries. You don't come to Jiu-Jitsu to get a black belt; you come to understand what ground fighting is, thereby grasping its essence over time.

The same applies to any energy exercises, meditation, and everything else in this realm, of course. Not to snatch the result by force so you can go around boasting about your achievements at some trendy new retreat, but to truly immerse yourself in the subject, to understand it, to explore it from all sides.

Imagine yourself as a scientist preparing to defend a doctoral dissertation, who, as a true scientist, should not be concerned with his rank or status. The essence of a scientist is to sincerely and honestly strive to make a discovery, to learn something, to realize, to understand, to penetrate the core of truth, or at least to try to do so. The reward, the conferral of a title, etc. – these are all consequences of the cause; you could chase after them only for a raise in salary at work... but the scientist will not become smarter or more developed for it if he betrays his essence, his pure, sincere, and in some ways childlike curiosity, and prefers to it the dreary harbor of stability and security.

The one who practices the exercises we are talking about here is, in a sense, the same kind of scientist. A scientist is primarily not a title, not a rank, not a profession, and not a job; a scientist is a state, the state of a researcher.

Become a researcher, at least in your exercises, and then in relation to everything else. And life will become much more interesting!

#ArthurOHarra #SelfDiscipline #ItsNotTheResultButTheJourneyToIt #PathOfKnowledge #LightOfTruth